Tag: Moroni 10:3-5

This is my attempt to take a picture of a piece of dried jackfruit. It tasted like dried fruit — not especially different but good. I was trying to come up with things to take pictures of! This is the view from our house.This machine makes “caldo de cana.” You feed huge sugarcane stalks in the first hole and yellow juice comes out the second hole and goes through the strainer. It´s super cool! Unfortunately Sister Porcote [from Curitiba, Brazil] said the one we had wasn’t a good specimen of caldo de cana, but on the bright side, now I have an excuse to try it again! [Finished product? Caldo de cana–or sugarcane juice]Sister Porcote and I with Sister Dolores, who got baptized my first week in Palmares. We see her a lot and she is awesome. She used to drink coffee all the time, but then she discovered Cevada, which she says is very similar (but you have to buy the right brand). It´s good. Sister Porcote and I and people we know at “District Conference” which is like stake conference [a semi-annual meeting where several wards or church congregations meet together] but for branches [smaller church congregations for places where there aren’t as many members].

I know basically all the people in this photo. On my right are some boys who got baptized this year or a year and a little ago. We see them all the time because they´re doing an awesome job of teaching with us and they´re really good friends with each other. Two of them are ward missionaries! They are blessings and downsides of living in a big ward [church congregation] in Utah. I wish I had the chance to teach with the missionaries!

Oi! Happy Thanksgiving! Nobody celebrates Thanksgiving here, but they do celebrate Black Friday. All the shops had sales and the city center was a mad house. The gas station had a huge reduction in price and we could hear the loudspeaker from our house while we were trying to study. It’s a little sad to have Black Friday but not Thanksgiving, but on the bright side it means the Christmas decorations go up even earlier! There are lots of fake evergreen garlands and red bows and lights: pisca-pisca [Portuguese for blink, blink]. We bought some lights for our house! I will try to send a picture next week–I have more pics than I sent this week already and the internet is still super slow. I am trying to make the camera work [for wifi downloads] but am having trouble.

Sister Porcote and I will be together until after Christmas. That is normal for training — you have the same companion both transfers.

In the CTM [Brazil’s missionary training center] several missionaries in my district knew someone who went to Japan and said they came back more quiet, reserved, etc. I imagine that transition might have been a little easier for me. I am suspicious that Heavenly Father decided I needed to be more outgoing or more of a hugger or something and sent me here! But the transition hasn’t really been that hard. I’m really blessed not to be having health challenges or super hard things happening in Palmares.

You asked how often we get to eat with the members. We have lunch planned every day but it is often money instead of actual food. Less exciting than it sounds because we keep eating at restaurants and from my perspective the restaurants all seem the same. But the fruit is really good! And the members make really good desserts sometimes, so I´m grateful.

This was a family home evening for a recent convert who had a birthday. He had never had a birthday celebration before and was very excited.

We have been trying to teach a young man, “Rafael” for a while, but kept having trouble actually finding him to teach because he is very busy. He goes to seminary every day, but works before seminary and goes to school after seminary! (School can be before lunch or after lunch or at night here). He is awesome — super interested in religion, really wants to follow God. The only problem is that he was reactivated in a different church a little while back and wasn’t sure if he wanted to change. Yesterday he said he hadn’t received an answer with certainty yet. He said he thought he wanted to get baptized but not yet because he wanted to keep participating in his other church´s youth program. But during our lesson he started crying and said he would get baptized on the 8th! It was wonderful to have the opportunity to see someone get an answer to prayer like that. The promise is true — if you pray about the Book of Mormon with sincerity and a real desire to follow God’s will you will receive an answer! Sometimes it takes time, but it comes.

This week I have been thinking a lot about how God prepares people for the gospel. It is really amazing! This week we decided to follow up on some references–addresses of people in our area that ask for a Book of Mormon, or that meet missionaries in another city. We got everything ready and went to the bus station, only to discover that no buses were leaving for Ribeirão for several hours. So we went to a different city, and returned to the bus station another day to go to Ribeirão. We had two references there, so we walked around asking people if they knew either address. Everyone said, “You have a reference point? I don’t recognize these street names!” But finally we found some people who pointed us in the right direction for one of the references.

We clapped at the door [similar to ringing the doorbell in the U.S.] and then we waited, and waited, and called again, and waited, and finally someone opened the door (We’ll call him José, pronounced Jo-zay). José is a history professor who is super interested in American history and loves to read. He read about “Mormons” (nickname for members of our church) and was intrigued by our emphasis on education, families, dressing respectably, etc. A couple years ago he found a moth-eaten Book of Mormon on a friend’s book shelf, but couldn’t read much because of the damage. Then he ran into missionaries once or twice, but could only speak to them for about two minutes. Finally, he found a little more info online, and asked for someone to send him a Book of Mormon.

And then he waited for months (Someone did not contact their references quickly. Bad missionaries!). Finally we showed up on Wednesday afternoon, the only time he’s free the entire week. The rest of the week he’s either working or studying for his doctorate, so he is literally never home except for Wednesday afternoons. Usually he doesn’t answer the door, but this time he decided to see who it was. It was amazing — he is super knowledgeable about religion, but that does not get in the way of his spiritual abilities. We gave him a picture of Joseph Smith’s first vision, and while we were explaining it he turned it over and started to read the text. Then he said, “Wow, this scripture really touches me.” It was Moroni 10:4, a scripture we often share with investigators. But he beat us to it! I invited him to follow Christ’s example and be baptized once he had received confirmation by the spirit that our message was true, and he agreed immediately — just completely nonchalantly as if it was the obvious next step. It was a miracle!

I’m halfway through the CTM experience! I’m not sure how to feel; I’m excited to leave the [CTM] and teach people, but teaching people in Portuguese is still scary. On Saturday we’re venturing out into the real world for real-life “street contacting” where we’ll share short messages about Christ (in Portuguese!) and get contact information. The prospect of using 22 days of Portuguese study to stop random people on the street is fairly terrifying! But I learn more words every day, and the other missionaries who did it all survived, so I’m sure it will turn out fine.

My mom asked if I can tell I’m in Brazil inside the confines of the CTM. I definitely can! We have a great view from our window of the city. The water taps are separate, the plugs are different, everything has signs in Portuguese, and the water fountains have buttons for “natural water” (room temp) and “cold water.” The computer keyboards are very confusing. Typically, breakfast is fruit (papaya, melon, banana), ham & cheese paninis, baguette rolls (delicious but I miss whole wheat bread) and extremely sweet porridge made with sweetened condensed milk.

[for illustration only–no photos from the CTM yet]

For lunch, we have beans, white and brown rice, various kinds of meat, grated vegetables (beets, zucchini, carrots, etc.), lettuce, and one or two other vegetables — often one I can’t recognize. Dinner is similar. Sometimes we have something different like pasta, hot dogs, or soup. They have dessert which is usually some kind of jello or pudding. It’s usually quite sweet and not flavours I recognize. The food is good, if not what I would choose to make myself. It’s not very flavorful, but they have good hot sauce. I think I use more hot sauce here than at home which is saying a lot! There are no labels so some foods are a surprise. Once I got something I thought was roasted carrots but turned out to be strangely-colored hot dogs! I also had fun explaining to some Brazilians that US sweet potatoes are orange or purple, not greenish-white.

[Stock photos of the CTM cafeteria from LDS.org]

I felt the spirit a lot this week. Some elders in my group got priesthood blessings, where an elder puts their hands on the person’s head and says whatever the holy spirit tells them to bless the person with. I felt the spirit so strongly when they got blessings. I just felt so clearly that the blessings were from God. I’ve also memorized some great scriptures recently — Mark 9:23 about how everything is possible through faith, and Moroni 10:3-5 in the Book of Mormon, which says that if you pray about the Book of Mormon with a sincere heart and real intent, God will help you feel that it is true through the holy spirit. They are both great!